The other day I was with some high school girls and one of them was so concerned about her looks, in tears, saying her mates tease her because she has big bones and fat arms. While it’s good to ensure we live a healthy lifestyle which won’t allow us get obese, it would be a teenage girl’s undoing to care too much about her looks as long as she has good personal hygiene. If you spend too much time concentrating on your body shape, buttock and breast size now when your imagination should be sucking up sublime information and turning them to physical wonders and uncommon intellectual property then you’re finished before you step out into life. A lot of you are so enamoured with getting attention from guys and you’d do just about anything to have them drool over you! It’s such a misplacement of priority which could get you into so much trouble and practically derail your destiny!

For those who don’t know – a slay queen is a woman who wants to choke everyone else with how beautiful and cool they are. They have their make-up perfect all the time! However, in your teens, if your eyelashes are made of plastic, your hair- fibre, your nails- plasticine and you get used to everyone hailing you, you end up very dull inside but bright outside- with no guarantee of a self-sufficient future!!! Why would you waste all the wonderful potential God has loaded you with? Why would you trade all the time you should spend studying and developing yourself to become a world-class, once-in-a-life time or one-in-a-generation star like Chimamanda Adichie, Adeola Olubamiji, Serena Williams and their ilk for fashion and what people think about your look? There’s nothing wrong in being a slay queen if it makes you feel good but not now when you should be making the most of your vivid imagination, exploring and exploiting it academically, shooting for the stars!!! Fashion comes and goes! Most of the slay queens who reigned 10 years ago are tired, worn out and the world has forgotten about them because there are fresher and hotter fashionistas.

On the other hand, intellectual giants reign even long after their death!!! The likes of Professor Wole Soyinka, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala etc. are living off their names and their wonderful legacies! These are people we should wish and plan to be like! Sadly, most of you would rather sleep on instagram fantasising all day on how you’d look in that lady’s dress, her hair, make-up and so on! Hmm…I’m sorry for you o! According to Chanakya, an Indian teacher-

“Education is the Best Friend. An Educated Person is Respected Everywhere. Education Beats the Beauty and the Youth.”

What saddens me is that most youth usually forget about their childhood dream careers as soon as they start crushing on a boy or girl and getting into romantic relationships in their teens not knowing that those dreams are seeds of greatness sown into them by God designed to make them shine in life! Believe me; it doesn’t matter if you don’t know where you’d get enough funds to buy a NECO form, life has a way of rewarding hard-work and determination! A lot wouldn’t have ended up cleaners today if they hadn’t given up on getting good education because of lack of funds!!!

Prepare for your future, read, read; read good books that would avail you knowledge of almost everything on planet earth. Now can you imagine combining great brilliance, holiness, chastity, spiritual intelligence and physical beauty??? You will become that which the Lord spoke about in Isaiah 60-an eternal Excellency, a joy of many generations!

May God open your eyes, ignite your brain and make you a force to be reckoned with in the world in Jesus Mighty Name!!!